Results for 'online business ideas'

While the Shopify platform covers most of the needs of people who want to sell stuff online, it can't cover them all. That's why we built an API and have the concept of apps: programs that third-party developers can write -- and as an added bonus, sell -- to add features to Shopify. The API allows programs to take almost any action that a Shopify shopowner can take using his/her shop's admin panel and make use of a lot of the information that Shopify has about a shopowner's shop. You can write apps that make a shop's customers' experience more pleasant, make a shopowner's life easier or provide shopowners with information to help them make better business decisions. You can also sell your apps in Shopify's App Store, and we'll soon introduce a matchmaking service that pairs shopowners who need developers to build apps for them with developers who need shopowners to build apps for.

If you're interested in building a Shopify app -- perhaps you've got a client that you're building online stores for, or maybe you'd like to write something for the almost 15,000 Shopify stores out there -- you should check out the Shopify App Development page on our wiki as well as our API Documentation.

If you're short on ideas, wondering what kind of Shopify app to build, you're in luck! We maintain the App Wishlist, a wiki page containing ideas for apps that we've received from our customers and developer partners. We maintain it as an "ideas warehouse" for apps we'd like to see as well as a place to track their progress as they make the journey from idea to working software. Check it out -- if you have ideas for apps, add them to the page, and if you'd like to turn one of these ideas into working software, let me know!

[ This article also appears in Global Nerdy. ]

After six months, and over a thousand amazing online stores started, we are proud to announce the end of the Shopify/4 Build-a-Business Contest and of course, the winners!

The participants came up with an amazing variety of ideas, and we loved seeing the kinds of businesses that came out of it all. There was a lot of info, so we thought we’d show you how we saw the contest in the most interesting way we could think of – a Build-a-Business Infographic!

Click on the image above to download the full-res version and here to share with others:

Some 1,378 stores were opened for the contest, all completely new businesses that were started from scratch, and sold more than $3.5 MILLION on Shopify.

And here are the winners. Be sure to check out their stores by clicking below:

Congratulations to all the winners, and everyone else who participated! Hundreds of new, viable businesses were started because of this business and we couldn’t be happier. You can read more about the contest at the New York Times and on Tim Ferriss’ blog.

Here’s an excerpt from Tim’s post, which has an interview with all five winners:

DODOCASE

1) How did you decide on your product? What ideas did you consider but reject, and why?

Going back to our use first use of a Kindle, we were amazed and excited about the idea of an e-reader. At the same time we started to feel a sense of loss about not holding and reading a good book (despite what one might think, reading is at least in part a tactile thing). While we didn’t act on this feeling on the Kindle as the iPad was announced it was clear that we had to do something. Patrick considered many different types of wood materials to compliment the book element and ultimately decided on bamboo based on its eco appeal and its historic relation to paper.

2) What were some of the main tipping points (if any) or a-ha moments? How did the tipping points happen?

Since the iPad form factor was new, we had designed the DODOcase based on Apple engineering drawings. The first a-ha moment was putting the iPad in the DODOcase on launch day. We realized we had not only achieved our design objectives, but it was a way nicer experience using the iPad in a DODOcase than on its own. The second a-ha moment was when Engadget called the DODOcase ‘the Rolls Royce of iPad cases”.

The Engadget connection happened through the viral activity that surrounded DODOcase. Our target market on launch (obviously the early adopter of the iPad) is highly connected and highly social. They wanted to talk about their new toy and we become part of the conversation. These conversations spun up in the ‘echo chamber’ of Twitter and Facebook and quickly made it to the tech blogger community. Josh from Engadget reached out to us directly and we recognized he was a guy we wanted to get our product to quickly (he got case #16).

3) What were your biggest mistakes, or biggest wastes of time/money?

Fighting the urge of distractions has been a challenge for us. We pursued an iPhone 4 case design for a week before checking ourselves and deciding that while we had a cool product design execution would be a distraction from our commitment to our customers.

4) Key manufacturing and marketing lessons learned?

We’ve learned tons about book binding and woodcraft which we will certainly take forward with us. On the marketing side, we’ve learned that having a great story is as important as having a great product. As a small company, you need to connect with your customers on an emotional level as well as on the physical level of the product. We sell DODOcase’s exclusively online which means most of our customers are buying a product without ever touching it. To achieve sales in this way, its important that customers ‘want’ to buy into the story as well as the product. We’ve believe that we are in the middle of a giant cultural shift from the book to the computer (e-reader/iPad). We hope that DODOcase can help ease that transition by providing the tactile experience we’ve all grown up with applied to these amazing new devices.

Let me take a stab at ‘formulating a good story’.

For a small business like DODOcase, it is critical that our products have a story behind them. The seeds of product development for the DODOcase originated when we first held the Kindle. We were amazed by the power and convenience of the Kindle, but immediately felt a sense of loss about the traditional book. That loss was a combination of the tactile feeling of a book as well as the potential that an entire traditional industry (book binding) could ultimately be destroyed by such technology. These feelings became the core of the DODOcase product story. We set out to make a product that helped assuage these feeling as consumers embraced the iPad. Users of an iPad in the DODOcase ‘feel’ like they are reading a hardback book which created a positive association with their past feelings of reading actual books. Further, through our use of YouTube videos and other online messaging, we told the story of how DODOcase is made using traditional book binding techniques.

The combination of a product that delivered on expectations we set and the story we’ve told in our messaging has strongly resonated with customers. At the end of the day, we made a product that we wanted to use and have tried to share liberally the many reasons why we’ve made the product and manufacturing decisions we’ve made.

5) If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

If we had the opportunity to do it all over again, we might look a little more carefully at our choice of wood. Bamboo is an amazing material, but it is also very difficult to work with. Choosing a different type of wood might have made our lives easier.

6) What’s next?

We will continue to expand and invest in our production capabilities. We strive to eliminate the wait to get a DODOcase and to better service our customers. We will be expanding our product line to support additional colors and customizations for corporate clients and universities. We will look at new tablet devices as they come out and decide if the market will be large enough to support a DODOcase model.

We are thrilled to grow our business in the great city of San Francisco and contribute to the local economy.

We can’t tell you all how proud we are to have been a part of hundreds of stories like the one above. A big thank you from the entire Shopify team to all the participants!

Today we’re thrilled to announce the five winners of our Build-A-Business competition.

During the 8 months of the competition period, over 10,000 entrepreneurs created new online businesses that sold more than $55 million in products. The five new businesses that sold the most over any two months of the competition each win a $50,000 US investment.

We sent each of the winners on a VIP trip to New York City to meet with the industry experts who served as mentors to the participants throughout the competition (Timothy Ferriss, Daymond John, Tina Roth Eisenberg and Eric Ries). Here's a glimpse of their trip to NYC:

In addition to the grand prize investment and NYC trip, each winner gets a special one-hour media strategy training session with editors at Fast Company Magazine, and $20,000 toward digital advertising for their business.

Here’s a visual overview of the competition, including our five amazing winners. You can click on the image to view in full-screen.

We’re excited to see so many great ideas grow into successful businesses through this competition. Our winners really took it to the next level, combining brilliant products with savvy marketing to sell an amazing amount of products.

Here’s a look at our five winning stores, their cool products, and the entrepreneurs behind it all:

GameKlip (Electronics & Gadgets)

GameKlip is the brainchild of gamer-turned-inventor Ryan French, an Applied Computational Math Science student at the University of Washington. Frustrated by the inefficient game controllers on his phone, Ryan crafted a precision-moulded clip to connect a PlayStation controller to his smart phone, allowing for mobile game play with a full-sized controller.

Ryan's product was originally created from simple resources. He bought a few sheets of plastic and used an industrial-strength hairdryer to shape the clip that attached the game controller to his phone. He was amazed at how well his creation turned out. “The simple piece of plastic transformed my phone into a real gaming machine,” said Ryan. “It worked so well, I had to share my creation with the world.”

Ryan decided to share his invention the way any true gamer would - he created a short video with his phone camera. When other gamers saw the video, they wanted clips of their own. Ryan started taking pre-orders and was blown away by the response.

“The first wave of orders was very exciting, but overwhelming. In the beginning, GameKlip was all handmade and built to order, which meant I had to spend most of my time bending plastic into the correct shape and processing orders. I had no ecommerce or order processing software at that time, so everything was done with a spreadsheet. I was working 18-20 hours a day, seven days a week, to build, process, pack, and ship my orders. Something had to change!"

"Discovering Shopify was one of the big turning points for my business. It was easy to set up and drastically cut down my workload. To further my productivity I setup ShipStation to automate the process of taking an order, generating a shipping label, and keeping records. The massive increase in workflow productivity allowed me to focus more on my product, and less on the busy-work.”

Ryan used his newfound “free” time to take his business to the next level. He purchased an injection mold so he could contract out the manufacturing of his product, and ensure the quality of each GameKlip was exactly the same.

Ryan French is still developing new iterations of GameKlip, and continues to grow his business online. He has shipped his product to over 80 countries, and has big plans for the future.

GoldieBlox (Design, Art & Home)

Debbie Sterling raised $285,881 on Kickstarter to fund her groundbreaking product: a construction toy that encourages young girls to get into engineering, develop spatial skills and hone problem-solving abilities.

From Bob the Builder to Star Wars Lego sets, engineering toys have traditionally been marketed to little boys. Debbie, a University of Stanford Engineering graduate, came up with the idea for GoldieBlox while discussing her career choice with a fellow female engineer.

“We were discussing why we became engineers. My colleague grew up with three older brothers and played with their hand-me-down Lego and Lincoln Logs. When it came time to pick a major, engineering seemed like a great choice, and it never occured to her that it was a weird career for girls. I started to think that I had missed out. My parents didn’t buy me construction toys because they didn’t think I would like them. They thought of them as boy’s toys. If I had played with construction toys as a kid, I probably would have developed my passion for engineering much earlier.”

Debbie set out to find examples of construction toys in the “girls” sections of toy stores, and was disappointed to discover very few options. “I started thinking about all the little girls out there who could be great engineers but would never even consider it. When I walked down the pink isle in the toy store, I felt like I was back in the 1950s," said Debbie. "This was an amazing opportunity to open little girls’ eyes to the possibilities of engineering. I became obsessed and it was all I could think about, all I wanted to do.”

Debbie created the character of Goldie, a spirited female engineer, to be her toy line’s mascot. The line’s debut toy, “GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine,” turns construction into a game, where little girls must build a belt drive to help Goldie’s dog chase his tail.

Fresh-Tops (Fashion & Apparel)

Fresh-Tops is a “bubble-gum, hipster-chic” fashion brand spawned by an orgy of glitter, ice cream and electro-pop. Creator Nella Chunky produces limited edition women’s clothing and accessories.

Nella’s success wasn’t an accident – she experimented with several different brands and clothing lines before she decided on the Fresh-Tops line. “We started up with a couple of designs and just went from there. We really listened to what our fans wanted. We listened to their suggestions and just kept experimenting,” said Nella.

Nella chooses new pieces for the Fresh-Tops clothing line based on suggestions and requests made by her fans on Facebook and Twitter. This novel and progressive use of social media meant that Nella was able to produce the exact product her fans wanted. She attributes her success to the relationship between her fans and her business: “You really have to listen to what people want, and then give it to them. You have to be flexible and keep adapting to their needs.”

SkinnyMe Tea ("Everything Else") 

Gretta van Riel created this successful brand of tea in order to help people detoxify and lose weight. The teas, made from natural ingredients, are said to increase metabolism and even improve digestion, complexion, and sleep.

Gretta was working as the digital marketing manager at a large media agency in Melbourne, Australia, when she came up with her great idea. “I actually had a dream about the teatox,” said Gretta. “I woke up with a name, an idea and a vision, and made the website using Shopify the very next day. It was so great to be able to have an idea and go from conception to inception so quickly with the help of Shopify.”

Gretta developed her line of teas using all natural ingredients that help people shed unwanted weight by increasing metabolism and removing harmful toxins from the body.

It wasn’t long before the sales started flooding in, and Gretta had a difficult decision to make. “I had to choose between a steady job that I liked, or following SkinnyMe, which was really my passion. Luckily the sales started coming in quickly, and that helped me make up my mind.”

“There aren't many other detox products on the market that utilise only tea and that are completely natural. So the concept has caught on quite nicely. It helps that the product works really well, with many of our customers experiencing some truly incredible results. This has meant that our vision was able to spread very quickly via social media and word of mouth.”

Now SkinnyMe Teas are popular all over the world, with their most popular product being the Teatox pack, an all-natural detox program.

Canadian Icons (Canadian Winner)

When Aron Slipacoff decided to create a store that sold Canadiana, he didn’t want it to be just another consumer website. Instead, he created a unique shopping experience where visitors can buy iconic Canadian items, and also get a taste of Canadian history and culture. The shop sells everything from mukluks to unique paintings by Group of Seven artist, Emily Carr. Even the service, which is prompt, friendly and trustworthy, is a truly Canadian experience.

The idea for the shop came out of Aron's deep love of Canadiana and his desire to share iconic Canadian products with the world. “I wanted to present Canada’s past in a new, contemporary way,” said Aron. “As someone who lived in the Canadian Arctic, I am really passionate about what Canada’s north offers the world geographically and culturally. I wanted people to experience the stories and products that are inspired by the north.”

Aron wanted his customers to understand why the Canadian products he sells are so special. “To fully appreciate a Canada Goose parka for example, you need to see its connection to Canada’s Arctic peoples, how Canada Goose works with Inuit elders on design, how the company gives back to these communities. You need a more complete picture of the uniquely Canadian connection to the product to really get the feel for what makes it iconic.”

So instead of launching a store that simply sold products, Aron built his shop to be a bit like a Canadian museum, with the history and stories of the product built into the shopping experience. 

“Items like Canada Goose coats and Manitobah Mukluks are being sold and admired all over the world, but the Canadian stories behind the brands were left untold. There is a trend now where people want to become more knowledgeable about what they consume and spend money on. The marriage of these ideas was how CanadianIcons.ca was born.”

Aron also wanted his customers to experience what Canadian culture is so well-known for: its friendliness and warmth. So he decided to ship orders for free. “We thought about it and decided to offer 90-minute delivery in the nation’s capital, and we offered next-day delivery everywhere else in the country. Living up to that promise was a challenge. Through all of the Canadian weather and the holiday rush, we realized pretty fast that fulfillment required daily attention and diligence." Aron's focus on service is what sets Canadian Icons apart, and has helped contribute to the business’ quick success.